


the Bible

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Lucy makes lil notes about narnia in her crappy school bible, Years Later, and has some feelings, lucy is crap at penmanship, susan finds it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:01:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12945915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: When Susan finds the small bible Lucy used to keep under her pillow next to the knife their mother would take from her, day after day, she has to sit down. The floor is hard underneath her and it creaks as she shifts her weight.





	the Bible

* * *

 

 

When Susan finds the small bible Lucy used to keep under her pillow next to the knife their mother would take from her, day after day, she has to sit down. The floor is hard underneath her and it creaks as she shifts her weight.

It’s just a school bible, thin slips of paper bound into something Susan doesn’t consider cardboard anymore. Lucy has scribbled her name into the right corner, in the messy handwriting of a girl who refused to practice for penmanship, her worst subject. _Lucy Pevensie_ , and underneath it, crossed out repeatedly, _Valiant_. The paper feels brittle under Susan’s fingers, and worn. The edges curl, and some of the pages fall out when Susan tries to open her little sister’s bible.

_For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures._

Lucy had underlined the words ‘sin’ and ‘raised’ and in her messy, tiny handwriting, had made a note on the bottom of the page:

_Edmund betrays us – Aslan dies and lives_

Susan traces the sharp line of the capital A, remembers how Lucy’s capital letters were always twice as big as they should have been, and how Edmund, with his picture perfect penmanship, used to tease her. She smiles. “Aslan”, she reads out loud, tastes the word in her mouth. There is something familiar about it, something soothing, and the word vibrates in her throat as if it doesn’t want to leave her.

She puts the pages back and opens the bible, properly this time, careful not to drop anything.

The entire first page is filled with Lucy’s handwriting, her huge capital letters, her sharp p’s and soft g’s, it is hard to read, the words so close together they almost look like a black mass of ink. There are blank spots too, where Lucy must’ve run out of ink and continued with graphite, which, over the years, paled and withered away.

Susan furrows her brows. Lucy has drawn a map, small and neat, in the lower corner, interrupting sentences and sometimes even words. _Lantern Waste_ , Susan reads, _Western Woods, the Stone Table, Cair Paravel, Archenland, Northern March, Ettinsmoor, Dancing Lawn._ The borders don’t look like any borders she knows, not even at the time the map must’ve been drawn, when the war moved and shifted them.

Again, she reads the names out loud, savours them on her tongue. They taste familiar and foreign and Susan lingers at _Lantern Waste_. There’s a schematic drawing of a lamppost, with a little number beside it. It is only then that she sees the tiny numbers next to every name, numbers she finds again in her sister’s notes.

 _Where we first stepped foot into our home_ , it reads, and _where Tumnus dropped his parcels_.

All of the notes are like this, little reminders that seem much bigger than they are, and when Susan gets to the note adorning _the Stone Table_ , she mutters it out loud. “Where Aslan came back to us.” Where the mice chewed through the rope, her brain whispers, where we watched her stab him, where he took Edmund’s place.

She snaps the book closed. It’s a game.

It’s just a game and none of it was real. There is no lion, no faun, no talking beasts, Lucy died before she could grow up, she was never a woman.

And still, Susan can remember the ghost of a woman, barefoot and laughing and dancing. _It’s who she wanted to be, maybe, if she had lived long enough, she would’ve been her, this is just a game, just a game._

She puts the bible back into the box she found it in and slams it shut.

 

* * *

 

That night Susan Lewis dreams of the Lion, of dryads and dwarves and fauns and beasts. Of snow, slowly melting underneath her. The Lion roars at her and snarls and in her dream, she falls to her knees and bears her neck, her hair longer than she remembers it being, her fingers twitching, the quiver on her back cold and smooth.

She dreams of dwarves and witches and crowns and swords and loss and when she wakes up heaving, her husband’s hand warm and reassuring on her back, she drops to her knees, buries her head in her arms and cries.

 

* * *

 

On April 18th 1965, Susan Lewis goes to church again.


End file.
